Hitting Budapest Reloaded.
We are on our way back from Budapest. Back from posing for
photos and saying cheese a million times although we didn’t eat a pinch of it,
back from insulting the photographer woman because she even threw away the
thing we wanted to eat, back from stealing and eating guavas and having a shit
or rather, shits. Back from stumbling upon a dead woman dangling from a rope.
And we stole her new pair of shoes. No, we took her shoes instead because it’s
not ‘stealing’ stealing; she’s dead! It’s different from stealing guavas. We sold
them and bought bread which we are eating on our way back to Paradise. I’m
thinking about how her ghost will haunt us at night and kill all of us. God
please forgive us, don’t let her ghost haunt us, it was Bastard’s idea not
mine. “You, Big head what are you thinking about?” Bastard asks as if reading
my thoughts. He is chewing the bread with such gusto and opening his mouth
annoyingly wide like a dinosaur with every bite and chew like he’d never eaten delicious
bread before. “Nothing,” I say, biting my own piece with relish, it tastes
good, crispy and crunchy. One day, I will punch this bastard called Bastard to
death. Why is he calling me big head?
We walk pass Mother of Bones who smiles at us. She’s always
smiling at us, in fact she smiles at anything. Her teeth are brownish yellow
and scanty like trees in the Savannah of northern Cameroon. Needless to say,
they are very ugly, probably due to her obsessive, excessive tobacco chewing.
Godknows waves at her and asks, “Caring Mother, how are you?” like she wants to
flatter her so she’ll not talk about our absence. She grins harder exposing the
horrible dental formula and I look away as we walk pass silently sneaking into
Paradise. And then for a split second, we hear a commanding hoarse voice, “Hey,
all of you come here!” We freeze dead in our tracks. We can tell by the man’s
dangerous voice that we are all going to run. All of a sudden, Stina squints
and screams, “Run!” When Stina speaks, we listen because she never speaks at
all; only when it is necessary. And my friends take off in diverse directions like
houseflies take off from excrement when someone throws a small stone at it. But
I cannot run because I recognize the voice instantly –my father’s. Even if I
run, I would still come back home. He’s standing upright and holding a cane in
his right hand with that look on his face like a slave master who is about to
whip a stubborn slave. His eyes are fiery red like someone who has just smoked
a million kilos of cannabis and marijuana put together; a human dragon! Things
are about to get pretty ugly. “ELISABETH! Where were you?” he screams. “I,
I,I,..” I’m stuttering and my body is already shivering like the tail of a
rattle snake. I cannot explain anything, I’m too, too scared. I give him that
look of guilt; that look of a disgraced wife who’d just been caught after
betraying her faithful husband by committing adultery. I give him that look a
teenage girl gives her mother when she’s just lost her virginity in that first
sweet sex. I give him that look Eve gave God when she was asked why she’d eaten
the forbidden fruit. And then like Eve, I take the blame off me, “It, it, was,
was, Bastard’s idea. He’s the one who told us to go to Budapest and steal
guavas and steal, no, take a dead woman’s shoes and sell it to, to, to buy
bread and….” “WHAT! You stole a dead woman’s shoes!!!!!!” “No, we took, not,
not steal and…” “Are you…” twash, the first one falls on my back with a
swishing noise penetrating the flesh and sends me straight to the ground with a
“doop” sound. I fall onto bare earth and I’m rolling in the dust like a maniac and
scratching my back from all angles like the discrete directions my friends had
taken to evaporate. The piece of bread falls from my fingers and three fowls
are furiously pecking at it. One grips it with its beak and scurries away. The
others also take off after her. Twash, Ouch! Ouch! The second one unearths a
scream; a tortured scream from my vocal cord that passes through my larynx to
my pharynx to my boucal cavity and even my nasal cavity into the atmosphere in
a vociferous reverberation that almost deafens every Paradise resident and blows
off the rooftops of the shanty shacks. I am thinking how the punishment is
going to exceed my crime by any logical logic. Twash, the third one is
whistling piercingly on my stomach like flails of fire from my dragon father.
The flails are falling on my flesh and my father is cursing and insulting and
whipping and I’m weeping and he’s whipping and I’m weeping and the cane is
whistling and I’m rolling and tossing and turning and wincing and wailing like
it’s the end of the world and I would kill my father dead if I ever survive
this kind of military drone attack because madness has infected and
crisscrossed two wires in his brain and those two oppositely charged wires
weren’t supposed to come into contact and………(Wait, hold up, let’s fast forward.)
2011: I’m all grown now, sitting at a dinner table in Oxford.
I’ve been in London for week, meeting publishers, editors, doing readings,
press interviews and tonight is a big night when the Caine prize winner will be
announced. But I’m nervous and restless. I’m quite contented with the
nomination but also want to win this thing! Who doesn’t? The announcer takes
the cue. My heart is beating like a jackhammer. “And the winning short story
is…“Hitting Budapest” by Noviolet Bulawayo from Zimbabwe. It is a story with
moral weight and power about stealing guavas.” Everybody at the table is
clapping and clapping as I receive my prize and pose next to the sculpture of
Sir Michael Caine for photos like I’d done in Budapest in front of the
photographer woman who had eaten the thing. Many miles away in Bulawayo,
Zimbabwe in a place called Paradise, my guava stealing friends who are all
married with children now are also clapping and celebrating together in
Bastard’s house. Their kids are also clapping although they don’t know what
they are clapping for, or even what their parents are celebrating about. Bastard
skips with a bottle in his hands. “You’ve done it Elisabeth! We are all very proud
of you, you brought our story to the worldwide stage, yes. Here’s your
champagne, I’m popping it, poof.” And they are drinking and drinking and all of
a sudden, Stina asks, speaking for the first time, “Where are our children?”
They look around and their kids have all disappeared. Mother of Bones, who is
still alive; an amazing 200-year-old creeps in on all fours like a baby. Her great
great grand children have names like Collar bone, Rib cage, Cranium, Tibia and
the most stubborn one is vertebral Column. She says, “they have all gone to
Budapest to steal guavas with my progeny of bones. Chipo, your daughter
Hippo-potamus Calculus, whom you were pregnant with when you used to steal
guavas walloped Bastard’s son, Drunkard, the head of Horror on his head but he
went with them anyway. Godknows, your daughter, Devil Ignorant asked me -Caring
mother how are you? And I said fine and smiled at them more than I did with you
people. But I don’t know why they were all looking away from my face as they disappeared.”
Sbho squints sideways at Chipo and asks her in laughter, “dear, ring any
bells?” “Sure.” “So what do we do with them? Whip them?” Sbho asks again. “No,”
Chipo and Stina unanimously respond. “Yes,” Bastard says. “No.” “I say yes.”
“Okay, wait a minute, everybody listen to me,” Bastard orders. He stills acts
like he’s the boss, like he’s the president of Paradise. “We will wallop them
on the head and whip them hard because it is the cane that inspired Elisabeth’s
winning of the Caine, period.”
